Which statement best describes automatization in skill performance?

• A. Tasks become slower with practice.
• B. Conscious control increases with speed.
• C. With practice, tasks become easier and faster, allowing attention to shift to other activities.
• D. Babies are more conscious than adults when learning new tasks.

Answer: (C)

Automatization in skill performance means that with practice, actions become automatic, requiring less conscious control and allowing you to perform them faster. As you repeat a task, your procedural memory takes over, increasing speed and accuracy, so you can redirect attention to other activities rather than watching and guiding every step. That’s why the statement describing how practice makes tasks easier and faster and frees attention for other tasks is the best fit. Early on, you rely on deliberate, conscious control, but with enough practice, the control becomes automatic. The other ideas don’t fit: practice doesn’t slow you down, conscious control doesn’t necessarily rise as speed increases, and the comparison about babies isn’t relevant to how automatization develops through practice.